As Kotaku has been reporting for the whole year, the Pokémon Trading Card Game has been in a crisis from which it’s showing no signs of recovery. As new card prices hit record highs, it naturally draws in many new collectors hoping to hit it big, which causes scalpers to swoop in to drive up scarcity and prices, attracting more new collectors, then more scalpers, and so on, a vicious circle that is increasingly tightening, strangling the hobby. This situation has now reached a spectacular new low, with reports that people are attempting to sell the Mega Gengar ex special art rare card from PTCG set Mega Dream ex for $800. But there’s a small problem: the card doesn’t exist yet. It’s set to be part of Japan’s Mega Dream ex special set, only officially announced on Friday, which doesn’t go on sale until November 28.
Despite multiple promises throughout 2025 from The Pokémon Company, it remains the case that it’s close to impossible to walk into either a specialist or mainstream store and buy a pack of Pokémon cards released in the last 12 months. Since November 2024’s pre-orders began for the Eevee-themed Prismatic Evolutions, new sets have sold out before human beings can click on sites to buy them, while stock in stores has been stripped from shelves by camping scalpers before kids can spend their allowance. The only solution is to outprint the demand, but as yet The Pokémon Company has demonstrated that it either can’t or won’t do this, and in fact seems to be going out of its way to make the situation far worse. And following on from the gold card fiasco of Mega Evolutions, the latest English-language set that goes on sale November 14—Phantasmal Flames—ups this ante by including a single gold card, and having it be the most desired Pokémon on cardboard, Mega Charizard. It’s going to be crazy.
But if there’s one card that could potentially prove more popular than Mega Charizard ex (which is also getting a Special Illustration Rare version that will inevitably fetch more than $500), it’s Mega Gengar ex, and that ghostly beast is appearing in Japan’s Mega Dream ex later this month. And as reported by Wargamer (thanks PC Gamer), people are already putting the card up for sale on eBay. For $797.99.
To be clear, even though you will see American YouTubers ripping open packs of international cards long before their street dates (either because they are sent samples by TPCi, as we are, or because they get retail stock ahead of sale), this isn’t the case for the Japanese sets. No one has these cards yet. The art for the Mega Gengar ex Special Art Rare was only revealed digitally on Friday. Then cut and pasted onto eBay with a price tag.
Japan is having all the same problems with stock as the rest of the world, such that even physical Pokémon Centers over there are—I’ve been told—limiting customers to four single packs each. Scalpers will likely be abusing retail options to get hold of the booster boxes, stripping them down to resell valuable cards, and then dumping the bulk. That’s how someone could be confident enough to believe they can honor a sale of a card that is probably still in production right now.
Presumably the only thing stopping people from trying to hawk copies of the English version of the Mega Gengar ex is that they haven’t got an image of it yet. It will likely be included in whatever January’s special set of Pokémon cards proves to be, and guarantees that this tiresome situation will drag on into at least the start of 2026. It’s a bubble, and it will burst, but the concern is just how much harm it will have done by that point. Not only is an entire generation of children being excluded from the hobby (and thus from becoming the next generation of collectors), but it’s having a real-life impact on specialist card stores. Store owners are telling me they’re unable to get stock, and that TPCi is actively refusing to engage with them about the issues, meaning customers aren’t coming in. One store owner told me he’s resorted to getting up in the early hours of the morning to try to buy packs online from other retailers, just so he has something to sell on his shelves, while knowing he’s driving the problem by doing so. It’s miserable.
So, don’t buy from these scalpers. Don’t endorse those selling sealed product at double or triple the MSRP. Refusing to participate is the only action we can take to address the situation, and thinking, “Well everyone else is doing it, so…” makes you part of the problem. Yes, it’d sure be great to pull that gold Mega Charizard—it could pay for a vacation—but you most likely won’t. (The pull rates for one of the Mega Evolution golds were one in every 2,250 packs, ffs.) Oh, and especially don’t buy from people claiming to sell you a card that’s not even printed yet.
